Pier 1 Imports Gets A Second Chance Online, From E-Commerce Entrepreneurs

Retail Ecommerce Ventures (REV) the investment firm that plans to get rich turning dead brick and mortar retail chains into thriving e-commerce brands, today finalized its $31 million purchase of Pier 1
PIR
Imports’ intellectual property and e-commerce assets.

REV won a bankruptcy court bidding war for the Pier 1 assets, outbidding private equity firm Sycamore Partners, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month, citing persons familiar with the bankruptcy auction.

REV’s co-founders, social influencer star Tai Lopez, and Alex Mehr, a former NASA scientist turned online entrepreneur who founded and later sold the online dating platform Zoosk, said in announcing the purchase that they plan to do for Pier 1 what they have done for Dressbarn, another defunct brick and mortar brand that they have resurrected online.

REV acquired the rights to the Dressbarn name and e-commerce assets after Dressbarn’s parent company decided in 2019 to close all of the Dressbarn stores. According to REV, after it relaunched the Dressbarn site in January, revenue soared by 165% in the second quarter of this year, compared to the prior year’s quarter, and Dressbarn’s website and apps drew 3.5 million unique monthly visitors in June, up 18% over May.

They did it, they say, by using their online and social media smarts to find Dressbarn customers where they are online, and by selling to them effectively. They plan to use the same strategy with Pier 1.

They wanted the Pier 1 brand, Lopez said in an email reply, “because we know the customers have huge brand awareness, and also that the home goods industry is seeing huge growth in e-commerce.”

“We feel both these factors will really drive us to success,” Lopez said.

They knew the Pier 1 e-commerce assets were worth a $31 million investment, Mehr said via email, because REV uses a proprietary algorithm “that assesses each business on a specific subset of factors.”

These factors, Mehr said, “typically boil down to three main elements: its propensity and optimization for e-commerce, the brand awareness or affinity from customers, and the quality or value of the assets.”

“These factors were definitely all in play for the Pier 1 IP,” Mehr said.

Pier 1 will have a new website at the end of August, and customers will see a new e-commerce experience, with the same signature home goods and accessories they expect from Pier 1, Lopez said.

Since REV was founded in 2019, they have also acquired the rights to the Linens N Things brand, the housewares retailer that went bankrupt and closed its stores in 2008, and to coin and collectibles seller Franklin Mint.

Lopez and Mehr are also co-founders of FarmersCart, an online site that sells meat and other food and household products; and Mentorbox, a subscription service for business and self-development books and courses.

Lopez is a motivational speaker and YouTube star known for his business and self-improvement videos, with over 10 million followers on social media.

Mehr and Lopez, in a video on the REV website, explain that they see retail’s current troubles as a golden opportunity to buy distressed brands “for pennies on the dollar” and then resurrect them as re-energized e-commerce brands.

“Every so often an opportunity arises that is so big you have to double check just to make sure it’s real,” Lopez says in the video, in soliciting high-net worth individuals to join them in investing in distressed retailers.

They predict that there will be 54 bankrupt brands over the next eight months available for distressed acquisitions. “There’s a very narrow window to catch this opportunity,” Lopez states in the video.

Pier 1 filed for bankruptcy in February, and decided to liquidate all of its stores in May.

Part of Lopez and Mehr’s strategy for revitalizing failed brick and mortar retail brands is to connect them with a new generation of online shoppers. They definitely know more about how to do that than Pier 1’s former executives. But they will still face the challenges that killed Pier 1, particularly stiff competition from Target
TGT
and HomeGoods, the two retailers who made legions of previously loyal Pier 1 fans abandon that brand.

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